Virginia Beach City Public Schools and Landstown High School hosted the 2013 Hampton Roads education session for LEAD Virginia Saturday, Oct. 19.

LEAD Virginia, an executive development program headquartered in Richmond, annually brings together some fifty leaders from throughout the Commonwealth to study challenges facing regions throughout the state in education, health care, transportation, and economic development. The program was established in 2005 under the guidance of current United States Senator and former Virginia governor Mark Warner.

Saturday’s session included a presentation on K-12 education in the region by our division’s chief academic officer Dr. Amy Cashwell. Cashwell was joined on the panel discussion by Lisa Howard, president and chief executive officer of E3: Elevating Early Education, and Gary McCollum, senior vice president/general manager of Cox Communications and founding chair of E3, on pre-K initiatives.  Also serving on the panel, and representing higher education, was Robert Guess, information systems professor at Tidewater Community College.  The session was moderated by Landstown principal Dr. Brian Matney, a 2012 graduate of LEAD Virginia.

The LEAD Virginia participants were also treated to a breakfast meal prepared by Landstown’s culinary arts students, under the direction of teachers Kay Gramling and Suzette Johnson, and greeted by members of the campus DECA chapter, under the tutelage of academy coordinator Lisette Diehl and teacher Ann King.

While in the region, program participants toured, among other venues, Norfolk’s Naval Station, the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, Life Net headquarters, Virginia’s Port Authority, the Norfolk/Portsmouth waterfront and the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. They also heard presentations from elected officials throughout the area, the Virginia Aquarium, Norfolk Southern Corporation and Newport News Shipbuilding.

Upon graduation from the seven-month program, members of the LEAD Virginia Class of 2013 will have also visited, over long weekends, Colonial Williamsburg, Northern Virginia, the state capitol, Southwest Virginia, Southern Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley.